WASHINGTON — The Army’s surgeon general has been forced out, becoming the third high-ranking Army official to lose his job in a widening scandal over substandard conditions for wounded soldiers at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley’s resignation as Army surgeon general was announced Monday, the same day the Army released a report in which officials acknowledged they had uncovered problems with their medical system nearly a year ago, months before the current scandal engulfed the Pentagon.

According to defense officials, the new report, issued by the Army inspector general, was commissioned in April after medical personnel conducted an exercise which found that the health-care bureaucracy was overwhelmed by the number of wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“There have been problems all along,” said an Army official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Kiley served as commander at Walter Reed from 2002 to 2004 before becoming the Army surgeon general. His departure was not unexpected, particularly following congressional criticism that he had allowed the problems in the center’s outpatient system to fester despite warnings from patients and their families that they were receiving shoddy care.

At hearings last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked Kiley if he thought he should resign.

“Well, sir, that’s a difficult question to answer,” Kiley replied.

But coming so quickly after the other dismissals, Kiley’s departure might be a sign that Pentagon officials plan to push out other senior officers even before the department’s formal investigation into conditions at Walter Reed is completed next month.

In a statement, Kiley said he resigned because “we are an Army medical department at war, supporting an Army at war — it shouldn’t be and it isn’t about one doctor.”

The removal of senior Army officials was touched off by reports in the Washington Post last month that wounded soldiers were receiving slipshod treatment once they were released from Walter Reed’s hospital and moved into its less-visible outpatient system.

But the inspector general’s report shows that many problems were well known to Army leadership well before then.

Maj. Gen. George Weightman, the Walter Reed commander for the past six months, was fired by Army Secretary Francis Harvey, who installed Kiley to replace him.

But Defense Secretary Robert Gates, reportedly furious at Harvey’s choice of the publicly unrepentant Kiley, fired Harvey and brought in a new Army secretary, Pete Geren.

Reaction on Capitol Hill was swift.

“Lieutenant General Kiley’s resignation is another indication, I hope, that the Army has received the message loud and clear about the seriousness of the problems at Walter Reed and the importance of ensuring that all our wounded soldiers receive the care they deserve,” said Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., who led hearings at the facility last week.

UPDATE

VA ORDERING REVIEW OF 1,400 CLINICS AFTER WALTER REED CONTROVERSY: The VA is ordering its 1,400 hospitals and clinics to report on the quality of their facilities to determine whether squalid conditions found at Walter Reed exist elsewhere.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson ordered the review in an internal memorandum last week to the VA’s medical center directors. He said “recent events” compelled him to redouble efforts to improve the physical environment at outpatient center and medical facilities.

“I am directing you hereby to conduct and supervise a full and immediate review of your facility’s environments of care,” Nicholson wrote in the March 7 memorandum, which was obtained Monday. The memo asks for a full report by Wednesday.

“As medical center and network directors, you all are responsible,” he said. “Negative responses are required.”

Nicholson’s moves come in the wake of disclosures of roach-infested conditions and shoddy outpatient care at Walter Reed Medical Center, one of the nation’s premier facilities for treating those wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It also comes as Democrats newly in charge of Congress have questioned whether Nicholson, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, is up to the job of revitalizing a veterans care system beset with bureaucratic delays and poor coordination with the Pentagon.

(Click here if you are unable to view this photo gallery on your mobile device) The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek celebrates the life of its founder Ruth Bancroft who died at 109 on November 26, 2017. The Ruth Bancroft Garden is a nonprofit public dry garden that was planted by Mrs. Ruth Bancroft in 1972 and was opened to the...